


Upturned Pines

by MagpieCrown



Series: The Muskrat King [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Canon-Compliant, Depression, Dissociation, Gen, Pre-Canon, Recovery, hanzo is trying his best, injury mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-13
Updated: 2019-09-13
Packaged: 2020-10-17 22:13:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20628368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagpieCrown/pseuds/MagpieCrown
Summary: She is helping Hanzo escape! He is going to get out of here, leave behind the ancient rot and the nauseating stench of blossoms and– and the walls that leaned in to listen to his parents' voices. The air that he and Genji breathed when they laughed and quarreled and wounded.The air next to him feels so empty.





	Upturned Pines

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly, the motivation to dig it out, edit, and post came solely from people's comments on the previous part. I have Another part hidden on an external drive somewhere, so with any luck this time I won't wait half a year to post it.

_The edge is so near, only fog is beyond_

_I am imprisoned, like an idol, in the ring of fire._

Hanzo’s dreams, to put it simply, suck massively. He bobs in and out of consciousness like a dry leaf caught in a swollen mountain river. When he slips under, into the cold blackness, he doesn’t dream of being a muskrat anymore. His nightmares have no use for imagination now that they can use his actual memories.

The waking world, when Hanzo manages to grasp onto its slick sides long enough to become aware of it, is no better. His skin is still clammy with the residual fever, throat constantly parched, legs forever stuck in the weird in-between state as Hanzo’s brain tries to work with what it has, tripping over itself where nerves and tendons and muscles meet metal.

His unsteady grip on consciousness threatens to slip, but through the fog and the dark whirling water he senses a presence.

Hanzo heaves himself over the threshold between dreaming and waking with the resignation of a passenger caught in the limbo of a thousand delayed trains. No relief, no destination in sight, no definite reason to either keep going or stop, but here he is again.

A silhouette blocks the dim light from behind the _shōji,_ and Hanzo struggles to focus as a round face swims into view. He recognizes Iwasawa. The same nurse who what feels like ages ago assisted in Ge– when Mother was giving birth. The same nurse who, just a week later, gently but hearing no objections turned Hanzo away from the door, as if it could stop him from hearing Mother’s labored breathing. As if it could stop him from seeing the answer to a question he dared not ask in Iwasawa’s hardened features.

Her mouth is pressed in a thin line again as she leans over him, but Hanzo knows everything anyway. No questions to be asked. No family for her to herd him away from this time.

“Young master,” she says with a bow, her crackly voice just above a whisper, “I ask you to get up.”

(...The same nurse who keeps calling Hanzo by his former title, even though it's been over ten years since he took Father's place.)

Hanzo props himself up on his elbows, absolutely refusing to waste energy on moving further until it becomes clear what procedure Iwasawa intends to perform, in the middle of the night of all things, but the nurse bows lower, holding out a dark bundle.

It takes Hanzo a moment to comprehend, but then he pushes himself upright and takes the bundle from her. Coarse, stiff fabric. Clothing.

“What…” He starts, but the voice scratches too much as it climbs up his throat, so Hanzo waves an irritated hand at Iwasawa, expecting her to understand.

“My apologies, young master,” Iwasawa slowly turns her head to listen to something behind her back. “This is not a safe place to speak. I ask you to put this on and follow me.”

As if any other place in this castle would be safer…

Hanzo is too tired to object, too used to complying to refuse, so he numbly tugs the clothes on. Simple, non-descript shirt and pants, as far as he can judge by feel and limited sight. A heavy cloak with a hood. A belt. Western clothing. Iwasawa waits for him patiently, head turned again to listen to heavens-know-what as Hanzo grits his teeth and shoves uncooperative limbs into clothing.

Hanzo wants to berate Iwasawa for not bringing any shoes for him, but discards the thought with a scowl when his synthetic soles touch the wooden floor. Right.

As always, the first moment he puts pressure on his feet comes with a jolt, sending a stab of sickening pain from his knees upwards. Hanzo’s been through enough exhausting physiotherapy sessions to have a hunch that even if the pain goes away in the future, the foreign feeling will always be there to remind him that his body abruptly ends way above the ground, no matter what the bionics tries to tell him.

Iwasawa steadies him, her touch careful but firm, and silently leads him out of the room. The back of his neck prickles and Hanzo can’t resist casting a glance back. An all-too-familiar figure that simultaneously belongs and anything but belongs is lurking in the deepest shadows, but by now the ghosts are weak enough that Hanzo is able to recognize them as such and will them away. The figure is gone. Hanzo doesn’t look back again, refuses to inspect the acute sense of sorrow and loss.

Hanzo’s confusion at the lack of guards in the corridor is washed over by the dim awareness of voices talking not too far away. So are they informed that the nurse is taking him out? Or did Iwasawa catch the moment between shifts? Hanzo’s worn out mind struggles to catch up as he watches Iwasawa’s greying bun bob in front of him. No, she was definitely watching for warning signs back in the room. The clothes she brought lack familial insignia. She is sneaking him out, that’s the Occam’s razor, the easiest way to explain the clothing, the secrecy, the way she checks behind every corner before hurrying around it, huddled and still silent.

She is helping him escape! He is going to get out of here, leave behind the ancient rot and the nauseating stench of blossoms and– and the walls that leaned in to listen to his parents' voices. The air that he and Genji breathed when they laughed and quarreled and wounded.

The air next to him feels so empty.

Hanzo stops so abruptly Iwasawa takes several steps further before she halts, too, and throws him a polite look of a hound whose master is being especially difficult.

"I cannot–" Hanzo swallows and coughs, trying to dislodge whatever is making his voice so hoarse. "I am not leaving without my bow."

"Your bow and quiver are taken care of," Iwasawa nods, as if she expected him to say this. "I am afraid that your swords have been damaged and are currently–"

"No swords." Hanzo throws up a hand to cut her off as his stomach gives a lurch.

Iwasawa leads him through the darkened castle, avoiding main pathways and sticking to darker pools of shadows. Soon they descend to servants’ quarters – Iwasawa scans her card at the entrance, – and her tread loses half of the caution, though Hanzo can still barely hear the dry sound of her sandals meeting floor over the soft _tap-tap_ of his soles. It is the dead hour (‘the suicide hour,’ his mind whispers) way before the dawn that summer holds no power over. Even the kitchens are eerily silent and lifeless, moonlight glinting off polished surfaces.

The cooks get up first, so Hanzo understands Iwasawa’s reasoning. They can hardly run into anyone down here.

He realizes his mistake as they exit through the back kitchen doors. The people who get up even earlier than the cooks are those who bring produce from the market.

A started up hovertruck waits at the doors. Iwasawa wordlessly holds aside a flap at the back of it, and Hanzo climbs into the body, swallowing a pained grunt. Empty crates inside are overturned, doubling as seats, and Hanzo uses an arm to lower himself on one of them to take the strain from his knees. Iwasawa sits down on the opposite side, facing him.

The driver doesn’t acknowledge either of them, and Hanzo doesn’t place him from what he can make out, but he figures it doesn’t really matter. The man might not be in for it as much as Iwasawa. Maybe he tries to protect himself by distancing from Hanzo, pretending he’s not there. Perhaps, when asked, he’ll claim he didn’t know that Hanzo was smuggled aboard. Or maybe he’ll say that Hanzo threatened to kill him if he didn’t drive him away. It won’t be hard for the elders to figure out exactly how Hanzo escaped, so maybe this way the man hopes to plead with his life. Hanzo doubts it will work. He knows it won’t work.

A pang of guilt worms its way through Hanzo’s heart, but it’s too late already. Whoever he is, this man is now marked by Hanzo’s shame and sin. Hiding behind the mask won’t stop the taint from seeping in. The sickness doesn’t care to know one’s name.

The truck starts moving.

The only light is what slowly begins to bleed through the cabin’s windows, and it takes Hanzo a moment to realize that Iwasawa is fussing with an aid kit. She checks his temperature, pressure and heart rate, then unzips the legs of his trousers and rolls them up to look at the knees. Hanzo can’t read her face, but he doesn’t really need to when she shakes a portable bio-emitter and places it on a crate next to him. Hanzo shivers as the first pulse of warmth trickles over and through him, soothing like a gentle, careful touch – the way he would imagine it to feel.

“Young master,” Iwasawa’s voice startles him awake from the half-doze he’s managed to slip into in a split second, immediately lulled by the second wave of healing beams. “I have taken it upon myself to prepare something for you.”

She opens a box next to her seat and pulls out a duffel bag. It feels light, half-empty, so Hanzo places it across his knees and rummages inside.

A spare set of clothing. Three small, one-charge bio-emitters. Four of his fake identity cards and one real. Four ration packages.

Something foreign, not immediately identifiable meets his hand, and Hanzo pulls it out. A folding piece of chest armour. Hanzo stares at it, frowning. If Shimada-gumi hunts him down, he prefers to die fighting rather than to face the alternative. He puts the armour next to the glowing bio-emitter.

“My bow,” he demands, the weakness of his voice betraying him.

Iwasawa nods and walks to the other side of the truck to search the shadows, hunched over to clear the low ceiling. Hanzo’s heart seizes up with light-headed relief as he accepts the bow case and the quiver. He quickly checks over the bow and with some awkward maneuvering in the cramped space straps the quiver across his back and under the cloak. The familiar weight of it settles like a grounding force, makes him feel just slightly less like a ghost. Hanzo closes his eyes and slows his breathing. The damaged, ruined, hurting body writhes under his slipping control, but he forces out a harsh breath and clenches his fists. After that, the only thing left is gnawing, bone-deep exhaustion.

Hanzo watches with unfocused eyes as an ethereal cloud brush mixes the pink and purple hues of the sky. The bio-emitter runs out with a tiny, sad beep.

‘Me too,’ Hanzo thinks and presses his lips together, biting back the sudden spasm that starts in his throat and rises to his eyes. Every time he breathes out, his body seizes up, as if contemplating if breathing in again is just too much.

“…Young master?”

Iwasawa sounds like she’s been calling him for some time now. Hanzo must have zoned out again. Damn. He won’t survive like this on his own.

“Please forgive me,” Iwasawa activates a fresh bio-emitter; the flowing in warmth makes Hanzo realize how cold and clammy his skin has become. “You are not fully healed yet. But I fear that your complete recovery might not be in someone’s best interests, so I regret to say I had to make a decision to hasten your departure.”

Heavens, his brain is so sluggish. Has he been drugged? How pointless it is to ask this question?

“As a token of my remorse,” Iwasawa holds out something small to him. “Please accept this.”

Her solemn tone makes Hanzo lift both hands to cup hers, and a rectangular piece of plastic is placed in them. A money chip, the raised lines of the owner’s name glowing subtly in the dusty air.

_IWASAWA HINAKO_

Hanzo turns the chip over with the same kind of morbid curiosity that prompts to peel off a reeking bandage, dreading as much what he is going to see and feeling just as unsurprised when he sees it. The chip is unlocked. The meaning behind it is as obvious and painful as the decision to cut out the necrotic tissue – and pray, because there is no reason to hope.

Another person sacrificing their life to give him a chance he doesn’t deserve. How many more will fill Hanzo's grave for him before he finally joins them, the monster, the murderer, the kinslayer?

It is suddenly just too much. Hanzo leans forward, the edges of the chip digging into his palms. He sucks in a gasp that rattles his ribcage, a twinge from the knee joints as more pressure is added onto them just a background noise. The hum of the engines does nothing to hide his wheezing, shuddering breaths.

Iwasawa doesn’t say anything, doesn’t move, carved out of stone, a statue unheeding of forces of nature, a dead woman walking.

Hanzo grits his teeth, straightens out. Presses the card between two palms in a loose gesture of a foreign prayer, rests them on his knees.

“Why are you helping me?”

Iwasawa is motionless. “I do not dare voice my opinion.”

She is so composed while he threatens to shake apart. So collected, so calm, so in control of what life she still has. So free. A spike of envy burns through Hanzo and disappears, leaving a bitter, soiled taste on his tongue.

“Speak,” he orders.

“It is not my place to say,” she starts after a moment of hesitation. “But you have suffered enough, young master.”

There is something motherly about her. The way her expression softens as she talks. Hanzo wonders if she has family. Children, grandchildren. People who’d make better use of her money.

She pities him. Hanzo doesn’t want her pity. Even though he’s agonizingly aware how much he needs her on his side.

“You are right,” he just about snaps. “It is not your place.”

Iwasawa bows without another word. What little fight Hanzo had leaves him like air from a punctured lung.

Seeing that Hanzo has effectively abandoned the conversation, Iwasawa leans forward and talks with the driver in low murmurs. Hanzo’s temple buzzes with a phantom itch, and he has half a mind to listen in – the sonic arrowheads would help hear over the rumble of the machine, – but never goes through with it. His body feels too heavy, too listless. Moving seems like too much of an effort. Oblivion calls to him, familiar and blissful, but the overwhelming apathy leaves Hanzo undecided, floating between giving in to a darkness he knows so well and having to be responsible for his life from now on.

He nods off eventually, arms crossed, leaning just slightly on the quiver propped up against the rubber fabric of the truck’s body. The bio-emitters must have done some kind of a job on him though, because his senses are slightly sharper as he startles awake when the truck halts.

Is there a problem? Who has stopped them? Have they been found?

Hanzo looks at Iwasawa for answers, but she replies with a calm nod.

“We are here.”

Where? Hanzo hears voices. A lot of voices, muffled by rubber and distance and something wrapped around his brain.

Iwasawa pokes her head out of the back, and that’s when the smells come in. Of freshness and salt, fish and sweat, cooked meat and dust. The smells of a market. They mercilessly assault Hanzo’s senses after the vacuum-like sterility the air of his room has been burnt into. He feels simultaneously awake and suffocated, the sensation of leaning over a burning brazier and gasping into smoke.

Iwasawa is already outside, and Hanzo shakes his head, grabs the bow case and the bag and crawls out after her.

The hovertruck is parked in a narrow alley, balconies overlapping above it and sprinkling morning light on the thick shadows near the ground. The driver leaves the truck and enters one of the buildings in just two steps, his face turned away from Hanzo and Iwasawa as he checks his communicator. Behind the truck, Hanzo can just about make out the main market street, already bustling with people at this early hour.

He turns to Iwasawa and finds her waiting patiently with a strange barely-there expression on her face. There is a sense of finality to it.

This is it, then.

“Be well, master.” She bows down to the ground, her long sleeves brushing the cobblestones.

Hanzo just stands there, frozen in place, jaws clenched so tightly not a sound has a chance to escape. It might be a merciful thing to give her a quick death instead of leaving her hanging, waiting, enduring when a different kind of death finally comes for her.

It would be the right thing to do. The honourable thing.

But he is a coward.

Hanzo tilts his head in a slow, deliberate nod: far more than a servant can earn, far less than Iwasawa deserves.

The best Hanzo can do now is ensure Iwasawa’s sacrifice not to be forfeit. Hanzo doubts he has the strength to do it.

He turns around and starts walking, wobbling just barely as he tries not to slip on the round polished stones, wet with dew. Every step towards the street feels like it should mean something. It probably does.

Soft light washes over Hanzo as he steps out in the open. The smells are sharper here, angrier, the sounds attack his personal space as the flow of people makes him momentarily lose his grasp. He stands there, bleary-eyed and hollow. What is he going to do now? How is he ever going to make it?

A smell floats up from the rest of its brethren like a bubble of foul gas, and Hanzo jerks away as he recognizes the smell of blood. Just in the corner of his eye he catches a glimpse of a butchery, and against all his training and instincts forces himself not to focus on it. Not a target he can take down, but the darkest evil, the kind of danger that knows when it’s stared at. The kind of danger he _must not_ look in the eye. Look anywhere but at the butchery. Anywhere at all.

His stomach churns.

Mixing in with the crowd, hiding from view in plain sight, making pursuers lose his trail in this cacophony of voices and stenches and people – Iwasawa knew well where to bring him. The general flow of people winds around a corner and disappears from view. Seems as good a direction to follow as any. Hanzo tugs the hood lower over his face and trudges off.


End file.
